Crafts, Displays, Activities, Programs, & More!

Author: MrAnthony

Each year, we like to showcase the Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) winning books as they are very popular and circulate a good bit. If you are not familiar with this ‘series’, here is a blurb from the SSYRA website:

“The Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) Program is a statewide reading motivational program for students in grades 3 through 8, in a collaborative effort between the Florida Association of Media in Education (FAME) and the Florida Department of Education (DOE). The purpose of the SSYRA Program is to encourage students to read independently for pleasure and to read books that are on, above, and below their reading level in order to improve their reading fluency. Sunshine State books are selected for their wide appeal, literary value, varied genres, curriculum connections, and/or multicultural representation. The SSYRA committee is comprised of 20 qualified school librarians located throughout the state of Florida, subdivided into two committees- grades 3-5 and grades 6-8.”

In addition to the 3-5 grade books, we also showcase the SSYRA Jr. award winning books. These are picture books geared toward students in K-2 grade. We finally completed a snazzy section for these books in our youth fiction series section. The display features both the 3-5 grade and K-2 grade titles all in one spot for easy access. To go with the books, we labeled the shelves for easier access and I created display flyers that feature the SSYRA titles, a picture of the book, and a brief blurb about each title. This should help to further entice our young readers to pick up and check out these award winning titles!

For the winter months, I created this interactive display where children can decorate their own snowflake and add it to our snowy hill! I love creating interactive displays because they help to get the spirit of the season flowing within the children’s library. It also gives our wee ones something fun and creative to do when they are not reading books or in a program. I only had the display up for about a half of an hour and wee already have three snowflakes! In Florida, these may be the only snowflakes that we ever see! I miss the snow! 🙂

Whenever someone says, “I need help with a display…”, Mr. Anthony is the first to jump in! I love creating big high visibility displays. I especially love it when they are interactive displays! To help celebrate the fall, and the fall time holidays, I created a simple interactive display… it’s a pumpkin patch!!! The idea is very simple. Children… and adults… and staff come up to the children’s reference desk and ask us for a pumpkin to color and add to our pumpkin patch. No strings attached, just pure coloring fun.

To make the display, I made a very big green background, added some dark green vines, and added some fall leaves across the bottom and top to make the display pop! This display will run through the rest of October and throughout November. I will post updates as more and more pumpkins get added to our patch! Check out some of the previous interactive displays that I created for our children’s library:

Our library boasts an innovative Makerspace that has been designed to meet the needs of local makers and creators of many different backgrounds. Within our Makerspace, we house many tech goodies including our very own 3D printer! We offer programming based around using the 3D printer and the related software. I went by the Makerspace recently and the 3D printer had just finished printing some awesome skull pen holders. In the spirit of Halloween, these skull pen holders will be given to the different reference and circulation desks in the library. Super spooky and super cool!

Most days, I absolutely love working in the children’s library. Other days, I love it even more! Today was one of those days. One of the programs that I do at the library is our Stories for Babies program. It is one of the highlights of my week. I get to sing and play with teeny tiny littles! Cuteness overload! Here is what we typically do:

Shaker time! We play shakers, maracas, and jingly bells to different songs

Lots of dancing!

Today, my baby daughter, Ellie, came to the program. Needless to say, I was beaming the whole time. It made my already awesome program even more special for me. What a treat! She even stayed after to take a couple of pictures with dad! Look at that proud papa!

To get into the Halloween spirit, and prepare for our Halloween Fun Day, I created a scarecrow that sits behind our reference desk in the children’s library. He’s extra fancy with his snazzy orange tie and is already ready for the party sporting his best party hat! I added some grass for depth and lights to make it extra spooky! I will post more pictures as our Halloween Fun Day approaches! Spookiness!!

As part of our continued partnership with our local public school system, DCPS, we do our best to make it out to the schools for different events throughout the school year. During this time of the year, we are mainly heading out to each school’s open house event. These events typically feature different organizations from the local community coming out and setting up tables to provide the school staff, students, and parents with information about their organization. This was from my first open house of this school year! I was lucky enough to be placed as the very first table meaning that I was able to see everyone that came out to the event! For my tabling outreaches, I like to bring multiple flyers detailing the different programs and services that we offer at the library. Additionally, I bring a lot of goodies to give out to the kids, including: Free books, magic color-changing pencils, stickers, and bookmarks. For this particularly open house, I gave out over 60 books, 100 pencils, and countless stickers & bookmarks! Being able to reach 150-200 individuals at these events makes them very valuable marketing opportunities for our library and helps to strengthen our partnership with DCPS and strengthens our bond with the local community!

Great news! I now have a blog post featured on the ALSC Blog. Check it out here:ALSC Blog

The post is titled, “Including the Shy Ones: Passive Programming & Interactive Displays” and talks about the benefits of including some sort of passive program or interactive display in your library to better engage shy patrons that avoid formal programming. Thank you for reading and sharing!

In case you didn’t know, September is national Library Card Sign-Up Month! As such, I like to create a display at the beginning of the month to promote the library card sign-up push. This year, I created a simple display right next to our children’s reference desk. The display features a poster with Snoopy as his ultra-cool persona, Joe Cool. Surrounding the poster are real library cards. I even attached a pad of library card applications to the wall by the display so that patrons wouldn’t have to look far for one. The display is finished off with a giant library card cut out and some information on how to obtain a library card. We use the giant library card to capture wonderful photos of children getting their first library card! Now you have to ask yourself, “Is my library card active and up to date?”… well, is it?!?!